StreamCatch

StreamCatch is a powerful and lightweight browser extension for developers, power-users, and media enthusiasts who need to locate and capture streaming media links from the web. Have you ever needed to analyze a video stream, debug a media player, or simply save a master playlist for offline use with a tool like yt-dlp? StreamCatch simplifies this process by observing the network traffic of a webpage and intelligently identifying the master playlist (.m3u8) and any associated subtitle files (.vtt, .srt). It's a simple, focused tool designed to do one thing perfectly. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ KEY FEATURES ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ► Master Playlist Detection: Automatically identifies the main M3U8 manifest file, ensuring you get the master stream rather than just lower-quality segments. ► Enhanced Subtitle Catching: Finds and lists all VTT, SRT, and segmented HLS subtitle playlists. It parses nested manifests to extract the actual file links, even when hidden in JSON files or complex playlist structures. ► Intelligent Metadata: Displays the highest available resolution and video/audio codecs directly in the popup, so you know exactly what quality you are capturing. ► One-Click Command: Generates a clean, ready-to-use yt-dlp command with the correct referer and a sanitized filename, copied to your clipboard in a single click. ► User Control: A comprehensive options page allows you to either allow all sites by default or create a specific whitelist for targeted use. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ IMPORTANT: HOW TO USE ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ StreamCatch is a ► LINK-FINDING UTILITY ◄, not a standalone downloader. It is designed to work hand-in-hand with powerful, open-source command-line tools. 1. Install yt-dlp: You must have yt-dlp installed on your computer. Follow the official installation instructions on their GitHub page. 2. Install FFmpeg: yt-dlp requires the free FFmpeg tool to merge the video and audio streams into a final MP4 file. Make sure FFmpeg is installed and accessible in your system's PATH. 3. Use the "Copy Command" Button: When StreamCatch detects a video, click the "Copy Command" button in the popup. 4. Paste and Run: Paste the command into your Terminal (macOS/Linux) or Command Prompt/PowerShell (Windows) and press Enter. yt-dlp will handle the rest! ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ WHAT'S NEW ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ [NEW in v5.3] ► Smart Language Detection: Added a new "Detect Languages" button! It uses offline, built-in, privacy-safe AI to automatically identify and label subtitle tracks that have random, hashed, or missing names. ► Intelligent Name Preservation: The extension now preserves rich subtitle metadata (like "SDH", "Forced", or Regional tags) when they are available, only overwriting "garbage" filenames (like UUIDs) with the newly detected language. ► Fixed "Download All": Resolved an issue where bulk downloading would stop after ~5 files due to browser spam protections. Downloads are now safely queued so you can grab dozens of files at once seamlessly. ► Improved CJK Language Support: Language detection has been fine-tuned to accurately identify dense languages like Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, even on heavily stylized VTT files. [NEW in v5.2] ► Smart Subtitle Extraction: Now automatically detects nested HLS subtitle playlists (#EXTM3U) and downloads the actual VTT/SRT segments. ► Bug Fixes: Resolved issues with manifest parsing on specific streaming sites.